Both hard processes important for dilepton continuum physics in the IMR, open-charm production and Drell-Yan, can be calculated using PYTHIA [1]} tuned in p-p collisions and scaled by the number of binary collisions.
The correlated charm production can also be determined experimentally by measurements of \(D\) -meson production.
Unfortunately, such measurement of correlated \(D\)  meson production are not easy because of their short decay path and have so far been obtained at SPS only by the \(NA60\)  experiment.
The production of open heavy-flavour hadrons has been measured via their hadronic and semi-leptonic decays at mid- and forward-rapidity in pp collisions at the RHIC and LHC.
The results on \(D\)  meson production are in agreement (within factor 2) with pQCD calculations performed FNOLL, PYTHIA of POWHEG.
Nuclear modification factors for charm mesons, identified by their hadronic decay channels, have been recently also measured at LHC in \(Pb+Pb\)  collisions by ALICE [2]} (for recent overview of LHC results on heavy flavour see [3]}, ).
An analysis of dilepton emission in Au-Au collisions at \(\sqrt{s_{\mathrm {NN}}}\) 200 based on STAR data obtained with the Heavy Flavor Tracker (HFT) has been ongoing at the time this review was written.
THE HFT should help to reduce the contribution of correlated open charm decay while at the same time it produced additional conversion background due to its material budget.
Excellent tracking performance of the TPC can help to identify electrons and positrons emerging from conversion in the HFT.
